The Decider

The Decider has decided that it's time to drag Same-Sex Marriage out for the Mid-Term Elections. It was a tough choice between it and Abortion, but he'll let the party of Lincoln use that in 2008.

What the Decider and his Base don't want to understand is that it's not about marriage, but rather rights; rights that all other citizens have and don't have to think about. Currently, gays are the last group in America that can be taken advantage of legally.

Same-sex partners who have lived together a lifetime, paid into the system and have accumulated all the things that a married couple have can find themselves involved in a much different scenario should one of them die. Depending on how the partners have looked to the future and protected themselves, greedy and righteous family can legally swoop down and claim ownership of the deceased's property and leave the living member of the team with nothing.

Without the proper documents, should one partner linger in the hospital, the other has no say in his/her care and can even be barred from visiting by the other's family. How is society served by that?

Then there are pensions and Social Security Benefits that stop cold when one partner dies, while the spouse in a heterosexual union can collect until the day he/she dies, though he/she may never have worked a day in his/her life.

Health insurance, a problem to many is often solved when one member of a heterosexual union has a job that provides it. Not so in same-sex unions; the other partner does not exist as far as the insurance company is concerned. Well, that's not quite true. Some companies recognize domestic partners and let them insure a house together, but only after an AIDS test.

Meanwhile the Decider wants to change the Constitution of this country to make sure that these issues of fairness will not be addressed on a state level. He's taking us backwards. He's using the Law of the Land to deprive citizens of fair and equal treatment under the law.

As it stands now, two teenage, illegal immigrants , legally married in Mexico, can step in front of lifelong gay citizens in this country in claiming what the law says is theirs. What are we thinking?

To Bush and all the ignoramuses that he is using to bring up his numbers, gay marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage-i.e., the concept of one man, one woman...at a time. How homosexuals are going to harm marriage and threaten families flies in the face of intelligent thinking. It's a thinly veiled attempt to write religion into our laws, a goal that being pursued daily by the Far and Not-So-Far Right everyday.